[SunRescue] Re: Max harddisk size for Sun Sparc 20

[Robert Novak]

On Tue, 5 Jun 2001, Guess wrote:

> Some time ago I did ask a similar question on this. And someone
> responded that SS20 has no problem supporting 9GB hd. Also it should
> be no problem supporting 18GB hd as well. I believe what the person
> told me was true coz I can see ppl selling SS20 comes with 18GB
> harddisk.

I have an ST318404LC 18GB LVD/SE disk in my SS20, and it works just fine.

> Is it b'coz SS20 can only support SCSI-2 fast wide interface harddisk
> (model no. ends with "WC") and not Low Voltage Differential (model no.
> ends with "LC") ?

The neat thing about LVD is that it AUTOMATICALLY scales back as low as it
has to for any LVD or SE controller. I've run Ultra160 disks on a 20MB/sec
controller without any configuration or jumper settings at all. It just
works. If you had a 5MB/sec controller (older scanner interface cards for
example), you could even use the Ultra 160 disk, albeit at 5MB/sec, not
160MB/sec.

I believe this is about what Sun is doing on their Ultra servers these
days. The disks that come in E250s and the like are Ultra2LVD 80MB/sec
drives (some may have even been Ultra2 160) and the controllers (as I
recall) are 20MB/sec single-ended UltraSCSI (maybe 40MB/sec). Sun doesn't
sell a LVD controller at all. You can get third party (Phobos, Antares,
Intraserver) for PCI though.

Hope this helps,
Rob

-- 
Robert Novak, Indyramp Consulting * rnovak at indyramp.com * indyramp.com/~rnovak
        "And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
           Maybe this year will be better than the last...." -- counting crows